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Thursday, 16 October 2014

Meeting 12 November - Well Played, Jeeves!

To mark the Centenary of the First World War, author and ex-Birmingham Post cricket correspondent Brian Halford will tell the story of The Real Jeeves, the young Goole cricketer Percy Jeeves.
Plucked
from country-house cricket in the Dales, the modest young Yorkshireman
went on to
outshine the greats of the Golden Age in just two seasons with
Warwickshire - clean
bowling Jack Hobbs, hitting Wilfred Rhodes for six and outclassing
England captain Plum Warner. In September 1914 he bowled
his adopted county to victory over champions Surrey. It was his 50th
first-class match - and his last. Among the first to volunteer for the
Royal Warwickshire Regiment, Percy was killed, vanished without trace,
at High Wood during the Battle of the Somme in July 1916. But his name
lives on forever in the works of ardent cricket-lover PGWodehouse.
So impressed was Wodehouse by Percy's immaculate conduct and appearance
during a match at Cheltenham in 1913 that he noted the name. And three
years later, when he created a character who shared those very
attributes, 'Jeeves' - Bertie Wooster's infallible 'gentleman's personal
gentleman' was born.

Brian Halford's The Real Jeeves was shortlisted for the Cricket Society/MCC Book of the Year Award 2014.

"One of the finest cricket biographies I have ever read." David Warner, Yorkshire CCC website

"A
wonderful new book... Halford recounts magnificently - and with aching
poignancy - the terrible fate suffered by Jeeves and his comrades in
the trenches." Chris Waters, Yorkshire Post

"... an eye-opening book." Ashley Giles

"This
true-life story is as memorable - and surely more poignant - than any
of [P G Wodehouse's] much-loved creations." Simon Briggs, The
Telegraph

"The Real Jeeves: I couldn't recommend it more." George Dobell, ESPN CricInfo

About East Riding Cricket Society

Offering a warm welcome to cricket lovers since 1965. Meet top names monthly from October to March in the Brewery Bar, King William IV, Hallgate, Cottingham, HU16 4BD. 7.30pm for 7.45pm. Map here. £15 a year / £5 a meeting. T: 01482 861848 / E: ercsoc@gmail.com.